Sonia's Sassy Game Reviews: House Flipper

A game review from the unique perspective of a total newbie gamer whose only just started to indulge a life long love of video games, who also happens to be an adult(ish) woman.

To begin this, particular game review, I'll have to note that this is not typical of the games I play.  There are no story elements to comment on, for starters, so a lot of what I tend to comment on will have to be scrapped for this one.  Quickly that's:

• Character design - This game is first person. That is not important here.
• Women - Since there are no real characters per se in the game, this doesn't really apply, though I'll make a note that it's interesting that the person the player controls uses exclusively male-coded language.  Women aren't all that into flipping houses, I guess?
• Story - There isn't one.

So without further ado, here's the review:

Game Concept

It's really simple.  You buy wrecked houses, clean them up, fix them up and then sell the house at a profit.  It's a really simple concept that seems like it should have been done before.

Concept Execution

This game is fun.  It shouldn't be fun.  The player is only doing chores; picking up rubbish, cleaning windows and walls, knocking down walls, putting up walls, fixing plumbing, laying floors, installing appliances, painting walls etc.

I was sitting in the living room, doing digital chores.

What. The. Fuck.

And yet, I did it, and I enjoyed it.  Even though there were problems with the game play.

Game Play

Fair play to the developers, my Mac is ancient and slooooooooooooooow (I'm poor, so I won't be able to get a gaming PC unless one of my books sells like crazy).  However, even with that in mind, this game is janky AF.  There are a lot of bugs that need fixing, and a fair number of annoyances.

At the time I played it, for example, there were several houses that had one or two windows that just wouldn't clean.  There was no way to get to the second story of two story houses to clean those on the exterior, meaning selling houses that were in less than perfect condition... which might really annoy people more perfectionist than I.

Ahem.

That said, they are continuing to update the game to fix bugs and complaints, so chances are at least a few of these have been dealt with since I finished the game.

Also while playing, they delivered a number of new paint colours, which was nice.  If there were more options for the other things, that would also be cool.  It's hard to be original in your interior design when you have only three things to choose from.

I don't understand why doing chores and fixing up fake houses to fake sell to fake people was so engrossing, but House Flipper managed to make it so.  Despite the bugs, and the small frustrations, it was a really pleasing game to play.

I still think it's some kind of black magic that made me enjoy doing chores.

Finally

This game was great.  I genuinely enjoyed it.  Even though it was janky and my computer was incredibly slow, this was a solid, weirdly satisfying game.

If you're interested in seeing what I did with the houses that were available at the time, I have an album on Facebook.  I'm available for hire, if you want your room redesigned.

Yeah.  This was a great, satisfying little game that I spent many hours on.

​For some reason.